Letters to the editor for Sunday, Oct. 28

Published: Friday, October 26, 2012 at 07:08 PM.

Romney pulls back curtain on Ozbama

Some 200 years ago the German poet-political philosopher Novalis envisioned a form of government that he called a republican monarchy where the virtuous sovereign would appeal to the “feelings, desires and hopes” of his subjects, a monarch surrounded by artists, musicians, etc. whose role it would be to ensure that their ruler is seen by all as a lovable person of extraordinary intelligence, dignity and courage, his figure draped in grandeur.

Novalis’ vision did not play well in his time as the monarchs of that day preferred the more secure “divine right of kings” justification for power. But 200 years later his theory has reached fruition. “Hope and Change,” “thrill up the leg” lapdog media and a sycophantic entertainment industry seem to fit the Novalis model.

Many of us knew that the emperor, the uber-man who had promised to heal the world and slow the rise of the oceans, but who has managed only to raise the misery index for his subjects, was not wearing any clothes when he paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue four years ago. For the rest, Mitt Romney has pulled back the curtain on the all powerful Ozbama and has shown him for the fraud and manipulator of the truth that he is.

Now it is getting close to midnight and the fairy dust sprinkled upon this theanthropic wonder-man is no longer sticking, so if we just turn around and make our wishes known in the voting booth, Novalis’ cruel experiment will come to an end. Celebrity President Cool, who never could make the transition from the trappings of the office to the desk of the president, can chill out on one of his home islands. His mouse-like minions can scurry back to the universities, protected from reality and the rest of us can get back to the business of being Americans.

It’s easy to tell when Joe Biden is lying: he grins through his new teeth. And Joe told a whopper when he said there was no evidence reducing marginal tax rates would spur job growth.

In 1980 the marginal tax rate on joint returns of $250,000 was 70 percent. On joint returns of
$30,000 the marginal tax rate was 37 percent. Ronald Reagan slashed marginal tax rates from
70 percent to 32 percent. Unemployment dropped from 11 percent to 5 percent in less than 36 months, tax revenues soared and a generation of prosperity ensued. Back then Joe called it “voodoo economics” and “trickle down prosperity.”

Karl Marx and Joe Biden believe we should suppress the pursuit of happiness for the needs of the state and give according to our ability and take according to our needs. History is littered with the economic tombstones based on this notion: East Germany, the USSR, North Korea, pre-Cultural Revolution China. Greece, Spain, and Portugal learned nothing from history. Today, China has the fastest growing middle class in the world while Greece, Spain, and Portugal are depending upon Germany to rescue them from crushing unemployment and political chaos.

It is not clear what drives the ideology of this administration. We can eliminate job creation and the idea “free men in a free society create the greatest outpouring of goods and services the world has ever known.” (sic)

Continuing the Biden/Obama agenda four more years expecting different results is insane. In the words of Lincoln, this election will surely test “whether this nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, will long endure.”
Joe Exum
Snow Hill

Balancing federal budget a waste of time

Anna Grey’s letter to the editor last week entitled “Balancing budget a matter of will” was thoughtful and sincere but wrong on all levels. Her solutions for balancing the budget call for the usual cuts in spending, but her suggestions for replacing the spending were a little far-fetched. I mean, force fatherless babies onto the grandparents and sell government houses to the current renters? Really? Anna sounds more concerned with how the government spends than with how much it spends.

But the real question is why anyone would want a balanced federal budget in the first place. The government doesn’t care if its accounts are in the red. It sounds counterintuitive, but unlike businesses and households the federal government has no profit motive and no risk of bankruptcy. It produces and sells nothing except one thing — American dollars.

Here are three things for Anna to consider:

1. A balanced budget is simply the requirement that virtually all federal spending be funded by tax collections. How do you think that might bode for our individual income taxes?

2. A balanced federal budget doesn’t mean that the government suddenly gets smart about its spending. A balanced budget will not eliminate wasteful government spending, and merely cutting spending does not guarantee a balanced budget. Insist on more responsible spending, sure, but don’t expect a balanced budget to resolve that problem!

3. Most importantly, federal liabilities are private sector assets, and because they are, a federal budget deficit creates a private sector surplus. A private sector surplus means individuals collectively have more money than they owe. That allows individuals to save more and spend more. Isn’t that far better than having us skimp on savings and spending and going farther into personal debt just so the federal books will be in balance?

If you think we’ve been through a recession so far, just imagine the huge drop in money flowing into the private sector that a balanced federal budget would cause. A balanced budget would leave us all wishing we could dump our kids on the grandparents.

Oh, and one other thing, although I doubt many will believe this: the federal government could actually quit borrowing and taxing altogether if Congress were to authorize it and still be able to fund all the programs we like to complain and worry about. That makes balancing the budget seem pretty meaningless.

Jim Gaddis

Grifton

Slavery wrapped in misconceptions

“The Mini Page” article of Sept. 19 on Abraham Lincoln’s “Emancipation Proclamation” contains numerous errors and omissions. This is no surprise as anything in the mainstream media about the War of 1861-1865 and Lincoln will be politically confused.

The proclamation was only a war measure (as stated by Lincoln himself) to keep England and France from aiding the Confederacy. It freed not a single slave in the 11 states that seceded or in the states remaining in the Union.

The article strongly implies that slavery was solely a white Southern phenomenon. Of the 10-12 million black Africans transported to the New World, only about 5 percent initially wound up in all parts of this country, North and South. White slavers would not have been able to land on the African coast and “kidnap” blacks themselves; they would have been killed by the local African rulers. Victims destined for the New World were seized in the interior through raids on the weaker tribes by the stronger ones, and their captives were marched toward the coast, many times being sold to several different black slave traders along the way before reaching the waiting slave ships.

The African slave trade was already in place (shipping millions of slaves to the Middle East and other parts of Africa) several hundred years before the first European arrived to negotiate the purchase of slaves for transport across the Atlantic. The Atlantic trade involved virtually every tribe in western Africa and was governed by elaborate agreements with the European (and later Northern) slavers.

Underlying the entire article is the unstated assumption that Lincoln just wanted freedom for the slaves and that the virtuous North was fighting the evil South to free the slaves. Lincoln himself stated his mission was to “save the Union.” Sure, Lincoln believed the slaves should be free, as long as they were free somewhere else other than the United States.

Lastly, although the 13th Amendment ended slavery within the United States, it did not stop the North from profiting from slavery. New England (including some prominent abolitionists) profited handsomely from the ivory-slave trade in eastern Africa many decades after slavery’s abolishment in this country.
Walter L. Adams Jr.
Heritage Defense Officer
Sons of Confederate Veterans
Pettigrew’s Partisans, Camp 2110, Kinston

Romney pulls back curtain on Ozbama

Some 200 years ago the German poet-political philosopher Novalis envisioned a form of government that he called a republican monarchy where the virtuous sovereign would appeal to the “feelings, desires and hopes” of his subjects, a monarch surrounded by artists, musicians, etc. whose role it would be to ensure that their ruler is seen by all as a lovable person of extraordinary intelligence, dignity and courage, his figure draped in grandeur.

Novalis’ vision did not play well in his time as the monarchs of that day preferred the more secure “divine right of kings” justification for power. But 200 years later his theory has reached fruition. “Hope and Change,” “thrill up the leg” lapdog media and a sycophantic entertainment industry seem to fit the Novalis model.

Many of us knew that the emperor, the uber-man who had promised to heal the world and slow the rise of the oceans, but who has managed only to raise the misery index for his subjects, was not wearing any clothes when he paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue four years ago. For the rest, Mitt Romney has pulled back the curtain on the all powerful Ozbama and has shown him for the fraud and manipulator of the truth that he is.

Now it is getting close to midnight and the fairy dust sprinkled upon this theanthropic wonder-man is no longer sticking, so if we just turn around and make our wishes known in the voting booth, Novalis’ cruel experiment will come to an end. Celebrity President Cool, who never could make the transition from the trappings of the office to the desk of the president, can chill out on one of his home islands. His mouse-like minions can scurry back to the universities, protected from reality and the rest of us can get back to the business of being Americans.

Jim R. Tripp

San Salvador, El Salvador

Jim R. Tripp is a former resident of Kinston who currently resides in El Salvador. — Editor

Turn health trick into life treat

It’s October and for those of you with small children that means costumes and candy and trick or treating — oh, my! But for some, October means so much more. It’s one month, out of 12, when we notice a little bit more pink — well actually a lot more pink — all representing Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

This is just a symbol of a disease that affects women and men. Every 19 seconds someone in the United States is diagnosed with breast cancer. It’s not just during the month of October, but every day of every month. For me, that month was March 2011. I was diagnosed with malignant breast cancer at the age of 58. Please don’t take for granted that you cannot get breast cancer. You can get it even if you have no history in your family. (I had no history in my family). I would read articles or hear on the news that one in eight women would be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime, but never did I imagine that I would be the one in eight. Cancer can be growing inside of you for three years before you ever start having symptoms, or before it can be found. (I had no symptoms) How scary is that! That is why early detection is the best protection.

It was a routine mammogram that detected a lump in my right breast, despite my diligence in performing self-breast exams three to four times a week. The lump was about half the size of a pea, but had it gone undetected, it could have grown and caused even more damage. Today, after a lumpectomy and 10 rounds of radiation, I am cancer free! If you don’t believe mammograms and early detection can save your life, I am living proof. Do the research. Know your body. Get checked.

This October, don’t be tricked by the lack of knowledge. Treat yourself to a mammogram.

Sandra Jacobs

Kinston

McGovern fought war against hunger

Last Sunday, we lost former U.S. senator George McGovern. Although many will recall his disastrous 1972 loss to Richard Nixon and his subsequent leadership in getting us out of Vietnam, his truly lasting legacy will be his war on hunger and malnutrition.

In 1977, following extensive public hearings, McGovern’s Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs published Dietary Goals for the United States, a precursor to today’s Dietary Guidelines. It marked the first time that a U.S. government document recommended reduced meat consumption.

The meat industry forced the committee to destroy all copies of the report and to remove the offending recommendation from a new edition. It then abolished the committee, voted McGovern out of office and warned government bureaucrats never to challenge meat consumption again. (“Food Politics” by Marion Nestle, 2007).

Yet, after 35 years of studies linking meat consumption with elevated risk of heart disease, stroke, cancer, and other killer diseases, the MyPlate icon, representing the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s current Dietary Guidelines for Americans, recommends vegetables, fruits, and grains, but never mentions meat, and shunts dairy off to one side. (www.choosemyplate.gov)